More Than Tonight
by CallHerVictor
Summary: Dark-ish. Written from Chakotay's POV. My answer to "Could they, really, on the ship?" Alternate title: The Long Road to KJ115's Happy Ending.
1. Chapter 1

**"In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you'll never see again."**

**― Neil Gaiman**

* * *

**~More Than Tonight~**

I: Con Somma Passione

"_Come on, Chakotay. I cheated death_…"

The champagne she'd promised lay forgotten in the bottom of the boat, drained of its contents and rocking idly against the wood. I have no head for liquor, real or otherwise. But the synthohol is the least of my problems. The champagne was a celebratory splurge, but the boat had been the true surprise. The design, _my design_, kept and added to her program, the first hint she missed New Earth or even thought about it since we'd broken orbit.

She stretches out beside me, the boat and the gentle rush of her breathing casting some spell that drives my mind back to those eight-four days I had her to myself. Eighty-four days staving off an immutable desire not because of duty or protocol, but simply because we had the time to spare. _Plenty of time_. When those are spun out, what long hours we _might_ have spent in each other's arms

These thought aren't new, but her presence during them is.

She props one slender arm behind her head while the other sits loosely against her stomach, fingers tracing some idle pattern in the ivory fabric. Whatever propriety I maintain around her washed out long before this moment, somewhere between the recent memories of the lifeless body at my feet and the way the night sits against her face as she watches the stars.

I stretch, as much to ease tired muscles as to graze her hip with my fingers, leaving her with a gesture just innocuous enough to be ignored, if she chooses. Then again, that's our game – holding each other hostage with touch. Never letting one get too close while never letting the other get too far away. I expect her to move away now even though the intention of a moon-lit, alcohol-fueled ride on the boat from our star-crossed past should seem clear cut, it's obfuscated by each conscious choice she's made before this to retreat.

Instead, her answer is the lingering soft presence of her hand as she knits each slender digit in the spaces between mine.

I'm not drunk enough to read more into it than is there. It's an act of mercy, reassurance for the last twenty-four hours. I suddenly wonder if there _is_ more to her report, which only hinted at the version of _Voyager_ the alien had shown her in a desperate attempt to steal her life. But what else had she been aware of, witnessed? There's no way to be certain, unless I ask her, and even then…

Turning my head, I press my cheek to the rough-cut boards and stare at her face, inches from my own. It's the closest we've been in almost a year, the closest ever aboard _Voyager_. I can smell her breath, warm with champagne, but it's the lingering notes of coffee that really make me smile.

Kathryn matches my pose, her voice barely louder than the waves lapping at the side of the boat. "What?"

An errant curl chooses that moment to break free from her head and spill into her eyes. My freehand catches it before she can move to, and I take my time tucking it back behind her ear. I did the same thing yesterday, long before the Doctor and Tuvok arrived, too sick with grief to do anything else but fret over what damage had been done to her carefully culled hair.

Not wanting to _believe_…

To _accept_…

The sadness in her eyes tells me she saw this, too, and there's no need to ask her now. Everything she's withheld to this moment slips to the forefront of her face, parting her wet lips with the barest smile. She searches my face, eyes sweeping over my brow, tracing the lines of my tattoo, the line of my cheek, and landing finally on my lips.

My hand snakes across her waist, lifting me above her but keeping our hands intertwined. Through the thin material, I can feel her body reacting, tightening when the hard outline of her breast is pressed into my chest.

I hang there watching her focus shift, her breath catch, knowing _perfectly_ well what I intend to do but still forming no protest. Even so, she hiccups a gasp when I finally do, and what had been a hint of the champagne is now a storm over my senses. And I'm awash in a truth I had only guessed at before.

_I could drown in this woman_.

The longer it lasts, the deeper we go, mouths working together like they'd been created to do this and only this.

She kisses me back, swallowing sounds of delight or surprise, though I can't be sure which. Nor does it matter. She's pinned in the bow of the boat, the same one I'd intended to build her so many months ago before Tuvok's hail had shattered the tenuous acceptance of what our life could look like together. Heat rises from her skin and her hand cups my jaw, forgoing all the unspoken agreements we've made to maintain our objectivity. For the crew. For the ship.

But we've never been objective. Certainly not after New Earth. But also long before that, it occurs to me. This has been building for both of us since the minute she pressed her body to mine and bit me back from Paris, and I wonder if some virile part of me hasn't been fighting to get back here, against her.

Finally, I break away, rocking my forehead against hers to pull my mouth away. Her breath catches with every quick lungful of air that gives her only enough volume for a whisper.

"Chakotay…"

"_Kathryn_?"

It has to be a question. Self-assurance only takes me so far before my foreknowledge of her and what this means stops me cold. Besides, it isn't _my_ first officer kissing _me_. Still, it takes all my remaining control to _not_ help her debate the ramifications. Not to offer to resign my commission for one night with nothing between us. Rank, hesitation, or clothing. In that order.

When she doesn't answer, I collapse against the deck again, eyes closed, listening to the clank of a buoy in the distant harbor, telling myself it was enough. One kiss to cloud out the memories of her dying on that planet in my arms. One to sustain me until –

The air shifts above me, and when I open my eyes again, she's there, weight rested on her elbow. Her index finger paints a line of trailing heat along the lines of my tattoo.

"I can't promise you more than tonight," she says finally, resolute in theory, but quaky where it suggests it's her final offer.

"I never want more than tonight."

It's a half-truth and I know it, out before I can stop it. Her mouth finds mine before I can think to take it back, but what breaks me is the silent askance in that kiss, calling for everything she'd withdrawn from a moment before.

My tongue moves through the warm inside of her mouth, but repositioning while doing so requires a little creative thinking as not to end with both of us thrown into the icy lake. Her legs are swung up and around my waist as I pull her across my lap.

Whatever soreness lingers in me from recent tragedy flashes to non-existence, her breath and body the balm that extinguishes those demons while inciting new ones. Hands race ahead of heads – hers and mine – smoothing, stoking, and palming the places they've itched to touch for longer than I can recall. It's a dizzying sensation, to say the least when her mouth strays from mine to find the sensitive skin below my ear.

Pressed to my groin, I'd be impossible to deny where this is headed now, and I read in the rosy flush of her cheeks and parted, swollen lips, the idea excites her, if not scares her a bit. Still, the center of the lake is a little more out in the open than either of would like.

"Computer, replace simulation with Chakotay nine-one-four, and seal the holodeck doors."

There's a brief pause as the computer extrapolates our position followed by the sensation of falling that ends in a large down bed. As much as I've imagined introducing her to our surroundings, the heat of her in my lap has burned through the last bit of my resolve.

Flipping her to her back, I go to work on the snaps down the front of her dress. The first three come free easily and the sliver of white flesh gets a quick trail of kisses. There are a hundred ways I can think of to take this dress off her, but none quite as fun as bunching each side in respective fists and tearing into her life gift wrap.

When I do, she laughs and says something, but my pulse is a steady _whur-whur-whur_ over it. I pull my shirt over my head which allows her enough time to drop the rest of her dress off her shoulders. My pants follow, taking my boots with them. I snap away the clasp on the bra for her, taking it with me when my hands are lifted again. The remaining scrap of clothing covering the warmest part of her disappears last, and it's no accident the way my thumbs brush the insides of her thighs as it does.

Spirits, forgive me my lies. Whatever promise I made to keep this to tonight wasn't ever one I could keep. Leaning back on my folded knees, I stare down at the full length of her skin. Freckles form patterns as mysterious as the woman their shaped upon, and a quick zip of my finger from neck to navel causes her to tremble.

"Are you ticklish?"

"A little," she admits, her voice husked with the same desire I can smell as it pools between her thighs.

There's a twinge of shame spun with delight in seeing her this way. Naked and flushed, smooth planes of skin moving in ways her uniform hides. Up to this moment, the part of me that sees her as a captain first and a woman second has been decidedly absent. Now, all I can see is the other side of her, the one that routinely leans this way and that, hips hitched to consoles, desks, and doorjambs, swaggered by the heels that would look much more attractive if that was _all_ she was wearing.

The word is right on the tip of my tongue and I say nothing for fear of tangling consonants and calling her 'Captain' instead of 'Kathryn' when I push her legs apart.

The thought blurs away when her fingers reach out and take me in her hands, easing me past any further foreplay. Her gaze is insistent, but full of a mutual awareness neither of us takes the time to speak. As much as I'd like to take the next few hours to navigate her body, we are stealing holodeck hours already, and given the general level of ship-board boredom, discretion flies out the airlock the minute we have to walk past the crewman toe-tapping the corridor for his turn.

Without further warning, I slide into her, but stop, overcome with the sudden change in pressure and heat. I want her to enjoy this, too, after all. I begin slow, moving into with gentle pushes through the soft resistance her body offers until she relaxes into the rhythm and edges her legs wider.

We both know when we're in perfect alignment, bodies bucked together at angles at shouldn't seem possible, let alone pleasurable, but are. My hands make passes over the skin my mouth doesn't have time to cover when I hear the hoarse whisper of laughter echoing from her chest.

I search her face for explanation and find something darker, far more experienced than I ever predicted. "You won't hurt me."

Then again, I guess she's done this before, too.

Hands come to rest on her hips, but I hold her eyes when I draw back to readjust, jerking her down the bed and back onto me at the same time. The fire ignites and darkens the edges of her sapphire eyes to a deep navy. I won't last long this way, but she hardly seems to care. The roughness is enough and I feel the pressure building inside her faster than my own. A few more thrusts and it spills out in a long moan that quakes down her throat as her body makes one last wrenching grasp around my cock.

Her bare heel find the cleft above my ass just as I give in to her body, convulsing and spasming every last ounce of pent up energy I have.

I may never call her 'Captain' again.

She's already drifting back from the alluvium, when I fall beside her, and takes the time to mop the sweat from my forehead.

"What is this place?" she asks.

"It used to be my cabin in the Sierras. I opted not to live in 'fleet housing while I was in command school."

Her head tips side to side, curious. "And you recreated it here?"

I shrug. "I figured if I was going to be in Starfleet again, I might as well have a comfortable place to brush up on protocol."

She bites her bottom lip.

Poor choice of words. It brings the world outside these walls crashing back, washing the softness out of her face and replacing it with despondence.

"Hey." I cup the edge of her jaw. "I don't think anyone back home will blame either of us."

She swings her feet to the floor and pulls the crumpled dress around her body, a conscious effort to cover every ounce of skin before speaking again.

"Mark might."

We don't discuss it after that, mostly because she never broaches the topic, and I promised her one night. Then Vorik infects B'elanna with Vulcan libido, Kes falls backwards through time, we lose _Voyager_ to subversive alien technology and get it back to almost lose it again to Seska's demented holodeck program…

Near death and certain disaster pushes my night with Kathryn to the recesses of my thoughts, tangled inexorably with images of her corpse at my feet so I can't even find release in my quarters listening to the whispering sheets just a wall away.

We're tried and tested, by aliens and ourselves. Computer viruses, anomalies, the Borg. Then Kashyk and Ransom; both break her in different ways. Threaten to break us. One catastrophe after another with no time to think or reflect on the quiet, stolen moments of our past. I rehearse speeches between duty shifts, all I things I want to say to her, _demand_ of her, but find myself forgetting them every time those anguished blue eyes are turned in my direction.

She stops celebrating her brushes with death and I stop counting them.

Try to, at least.

We're at five.

And she's showing no sign of stopping…


	2. Chapter 2

~More Than Tonight~

* * *

~II: Cambiare~

"_I was hoping for your unconditional support_."

What she meant by unconditional, I hadn't the slightest. She knew damned well this came with a lot of conditions, unspoken the minute I followed her out of engineering. When I jerk her to a stop, my fingers wound around her elbow, and it crackles between us, sure as fire and twice as destructive.

But before we can act upon it, or even discuss it, the plans change. The heist she thought she was doing alone now includes assimilation of her, B'Elanna, and Tuvok. What makes me agree and leaves Paris as the only man standing in opposition, I prefer not to discuss. Mainly because of anyone, he knows exactly what is going through my head.

"Captain, please," he begs, seeking support for anyone who might give it in the moment. "It was one thing to attempt this before, but you want her to be –" He looks at B'Elanna, struggles to say it " –_assimilated_?"

Kathryn meets him with the same dusky gaze she gave me ten minutes ago, one that means she won't be cowed or even reasoned with. The only thing that keeps me quiet is that B'Elanna also knows what's on the line – Kathryn's committed herself to Seven, to Axum, to everyone in Unimatrix One, and short of two broken legs or a coma, she's set to do this.

"Tom," B'Elanna says. "I'm going."

I watch the emotions run over his face as he crumples into a chair. Shock. Anger. Fear. Grief. Dismay. He wipes a wide palm across his eyes.

When the rest of them file out, I catch Kathryn's wary glance but excuse her with a small nod of my head. She wanted my support, after all, and she leaves me, Tom, and all the unspoken truths of the last six years in the briefing room.

Paris pitches his hands in the air. "I can't believe _you_, of all people, are going along with this!"

Permission to speak freely, granted.

"I don't have much of a choice."

"The hell you don't! Stand up to her for once, _First Officer_!"

No need to ask to which _her_ he was referring, but it catches me suddenly that Tom's not just fighting for B'Elanna's life. And while it comes from different places, his love for Kathryn is as plain as it is for B'elanna, worn on his sleeve in a way I wish I could.

"I need you behind us on this, Tom."

I'm hedging my bet, being this patient with him, this surreptitious with my discontent.

But, she asked for my support.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever. But you tell me how I am supposed to look her in the eyes and tell her I love her, knowing it might be the last time I get to." He doesn't want an answer, he wants a fight. What's scary about Paris, is he knows my soft spot and still chooses to go for it. "Oh, wait. You won't _have_ to do that."

It hurts less than I thought it would, probably because it's not entirely true. Or maybe because in the years he's been spinning down from his wild ways and preparing for a future with B'Elanna, I've had no such luxury with Kathryn. Of the two of us, she's the more daring. More willing to put her life on the line for her principles and barring a complete personality overhaul, it will be something I'll just have to live with.

Still, my reaction, or lack thereof, does what it's supposed to and Paris collapses into the chair again, bracing his elbows on the briefing room table. I should probably put him on report. In the brig when that fails. Could, probably should, but know this isn't about the risk and the danger involved. It's about having the person who means the most to you ripped away by the same ideals that brought you together.

I certainly know how that feels. But she asked…

Meeting him half way, I stoop low enough to release a secret into his ear.

"I am not going to tell you what I intend to do, but I will not spend what might be my last night with Kathryn on an argument I _won't win_. I suggest you do the same."

I don't wait for him to respond, don't even pause to see the shock spread across his face before making my way to find her.

Her quarters are dark, filled only by the light of the streaking stars that play games with her outline against the glass. The doors close behind me, locking us in with a _hiss-latch_ I only guess she programmed to occur after my bio-sign crossed the threshold.

Her voice is full of tension and tears shed and dried long before I got here. "I left instructions in the database, as well as my orders, in case we –"

"Don't," is the first word out of my mouth. The distance closed between us, I use her hips to keep her still. A shudder passes from me to her and back again when I lay my lips on her throat. "_I can't_."

Success or failure, I can't consider in the moment. It's no surprise the way she gives in, letting my hands roam over the places her uniform covers, trying to force out the images of what she might look like covered with Borg implants, reminding myself the neural suppressant will keep her mind intact and that's all that matters.

We rest there, each of us fighting our own battles that twist our stomach into knots and force us to swallow the bile as it creeps into the backs of our throats. She swallows audibly, quivering. And I know she's terrified.

I could take my time, waste hours neither of us will spend sleeping tonight either way, holding her, letting the tears slip into her hair, maybe even rousing her to one final debate, which I will undoubtedly lose.

Or I can keep my word to Paris.

"I love you," I whisper against her throat.

It tenses her for a moment, a predictable reaction against the opening salvo I just fired at the barriers between us. Spoken or not, she had to know by now. Still, she twists in my arms, both hands bracing the space of a few inches so she can see me clearly.

_Not now_, _Kathryn_, I plead silently. _Not tonight_. If she turns me away, I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, but I think it will start with sabotage and end with mutiny. Paris wouldn't object. I'm certain of that.

The look that passes over her face is devastatingly vulnerable, fresh tears wicking down her long lashes to fall on her cheeks as her voice comes out shaky and soft.

"I love you, too." But it's conditional, like so many things between us are, and I've come to expect it. "I can't promise you anything."

Breath caught, riding out in a hitched whisper of my own. "Right now, all I want you to do is promise me tonight."

A soft nod is all she can manage.

Unlike our previous encounter, we have no constraints on time. No nagging concerns about privacy in somewhere as public as the holodeck. And I sweep her up, uniform and all, and carry her to her bed, seeing no reason to rush past all the things we had once before.

My hands go to work divesting her of her armor in blacks and reds, while my mouth takes the unmeasured time to taste the sweet swell of her breasts. An instrument to touch, her freckles are keys to infinite combinations that make her smile, shudder, stretch and moan.

I make love to her, over and over again, whispering the same three words as freely as I've ever imagined. But it's having them returned breathlessly as her hair spills back from her face and her body arcs toward the place where we meet that shuts out tomorrow and cleanses the hours of the anticipation of what awaits us.

As we wait for our bodies to recover, I trace the written language of my people on her flesh, starting at her ribs and continuing down her thigh. My finger runs the area where a hunter's bullet once struck the firm muscle, now a nearly imperceptible difference in flesh.

The words come out easy, fluid.

_Beautiful_.

_Courageous_.

_Warrior_.

My finger trembles a line across her stomach. It's not the same body from years ago. There's a slight swell in her abdomen, a rounded curve at her hip. The scars, like the one on her thigh, are reminders of how close I have come to losing her before this.

"What's that one?"

My eyes find hers, chin to chest staring down at me, her lopsided smile framed between her breasts.

"It means _beloved_," I tell her.

"Say it."

"_Mah-awah-yo_."

She repeats it, my language on her tongue. It makes me smile.

Then she adds: "_Daha me-nay_, _Cha-kotay."_

And that startles me.

"How much of my native tongue do you know?"

She tosses a small shrug. "Enough to know what you're writing."

I want to ask when. When had she taken the time to learn my language, and why? But it's swept under a sudden desire to kiss her again.

When the day comes, she takes my hand on the bridge, looks back twice. I almost go after her. _Almost_. But remember, regardless of last night, doing so will only prolong the inevitable. I don't breathe until I see the Delta flyer clear the shuttle bay, and I'm surprised how easy it is to fall into the business at hand. The Doctor counts down the last fatal seconds.

"_Their life signs are destabilizing_."

I'm not sure how I do it, but I give the order to retreat, and Paris complies.

In the end, we recover them. Unimatix One is destroyed, but the virus does its job, leaving the drones disconnected and scattered across the galaxy. I don't see Kathryn until she is released to her quarters. She's sore but walking, tired but still awake, pouring over reports and falling back into her routine, which isn't so routine anymore.

This year is a blur, ripping us through battle after perilous battle. Somewhere in there I hoist a mutiny with the help of Tuvok. A previous deal with the devil brings the Hirogen calling with a raft of sentient holograms, then an anomaly tears Voyager into pieces, leaving me and a suspicious Kathryn to piece it back together. Before we part, to return to our respective timelines, she asks:

"_Just how close do we get_?"

It's the first time in seven years I lie to her, partially because it doesn't seem fair, and part because I don't know myself. Through Klingons and sub-space inversions it gets no clearer. And when I find her on Quarra, she has no idea who I am.

The irony is decimating, and I cling to the hope that she is secreting me away in her apartment because some small part of her recognizes me as the man she professed to love so many months ago. But she isn't, and I know it, as sure as I knew that my promise to her that night on Lake George wasn't one I could ever keep.

I've always wanted more than tonight.

Shipboard again, she never confesses to heartbreak she feels when Jaffen leaves. I wish she would, give her every opportunity to do so, but all her memories have come back along with the ones that include me. And I can see in the cant of her chin that crying to one lover over the loss of another is something her pride and self-preservation won't allow.

Seven nearly dies and Icheb in the same breath, then Q again, and Joe Carey is killed. Faster and faster, we lose purchase on our ship, our crew, exchanging loss for gain at the dizzying speed.

Then she disappears. The Doctor returns wearing her face, but I can tell four steps into her ready room. Its. Not. Her. It's not until much later, when she's aboard again that she asks me how.

"The Doctor?" I ask as our dinner spins down to a natural close.

She shrugs. "Ego bruised, but he'll be fine."

"What are you going to do about his… log?"

"I haven't decided." She pours a second glass of wine. "I've been meaning to ask you, how did you know?"

"How did I know what?"

"How did you know it wasn't me?"

"I don't think you really want me to answer that, Kathryn."

She drew a mouthful of wine and let it wash across the back of her palate. "Tonight I do."

"_Tonight_?"

"Tomorrow will be different."

Not might, not could. _Will_.

I take a swig of courage. "She – _he_ could mimic a lot of things, but my body knows yours."

She nods through the revelation, considering what that means as much as letting the room breathe. She sets her wine aside and motions for me to join her on the couch. "Thank you, for finding another way to… prove it."

I have to laugh. "I had considered alternative methods."

I hadn't really, but the statement leaves her with an opportunity to address her previous statement, the one she so artfully hid inside ships business. I brush the hair back from her face but keep my fingers above the heat of her throat, revealing in the way it pulses against my fingers. I've never learned to trust that sensation, like the arc of energy from open plasma conduit.

In truth, I'm only waylaying the inevitable, and the Founders couldn't have told me I'd ever be having this conversation with _her_.

"We need to talk about something," I begin and let it rest there.

I've been putting this particular conversation off for a few weeks, telling myself I need time to decide if Seven and I are going to work but not really believing it to be the case. There's no reason for me and Seven _not_ to work, well, besides the painful blue-eyes staring me down now, hunting for the explanation she thinks she wants, deciding several times in the process she doesn't, mired in the place where her pride meets her fear.

"I have feelings for someone," the last word strips the bass from my voice, "_else_."

I'm not ready to say who, not yet. Let's see how she takes this one first.

Her head is swing back and forth as her words come out slow. "You can't be in relationship with a member of –"

Saying it allows all the pieces to fall into place.

_Seven_.

I want this not to feel like a betrayal, I want her not to look like she feels it, too. So much for the former, but the latter happens is a split second. The softness in her eyes, a precursor to so much bliss, vanishes. Not hides. Not dims. _Vanishes_, and the abruptness shakes me.

In drafts of this conversation, I predicted her reaction would be something, but nothing like this. A snap of clear separation and the barriers that re-erect themselves are palpable in their vicissitude. Suddenly, I'm floundering, fighting to see the person who had been right in front of me only a few seconds before. But all I can see is the captain, and beyond that, the stars.

It startling to say the least. Frightening is closer, but hardly touches the real mechanism that allows her to do such a thing. Humans can't do things like that. Fuck. _Vulcans_ can't even manage it. But it happens and everything about the way she sits now suggests she's shaken off in a matter of seconds what stole weeks of sleep from me.

"If that's all, Commander?"

It's not. Not by a long shot, but what else can I say? I won't apologize for finding in Seven what she found in Michael and Kashyk, any more than I apologized for Riley Fraiser. I can't say I'm sorry I sought the things she won't parcel unless under threat of death. But what is sad beyond words is that we could have done all this without the sex if she'd just stop lying to me and to herself about how deep this goes.

I rise but don't move away. She holds my gaze, unreadable for the first time in years.

"Goodnight, Kathryn," I say, hoping, praying, the emphasis I place on her name does something, stirs something to the surface of her face again.

It doesn't.


	3. Chapter 3

~More Than Tonight~

* * *

~III: Al Fine~

"_I've come to bring Voyager home_…"

It's said that time levels all things. The future shakes out just as it ought to, given enough time.

Unless you're Kathryn Janeway.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd played with something as fickle as time, though she's professed on many occasions that it only gives her a headache. But I'd be a fool not to know time is her white whale, then, now, and in the future, or so current company would suggest.

But this woman isn't the same vibrant explorer I met seven years ago, nor is she the taciturn idealist standing next to me in the transporter room. _Admiral_ Janeway is something different, on edge the moment she materializes, and I don't miss the uncertainty in her voice when she says it's good to be back. Good? No, it's not good. It's nostalgic, but more notably, it _pains_ her.

Our Kathryn takes it in stride, rightfully suspicious but undeniably curious. In less than twelve hours, there's a renewed sense of purpose to our work. Hopes pinned to a whispered sentiment that makes me smile every time it echoes across common spaces.

"Two Janeways? This has to work!"

And it does. We blaze through the nebula untouched by the Borg who seek to stop us. A breath away from the threshold, the dawn of our escape from everything the last seven years has cost us, and Kathryn hesitates at the chance to once again fight when all any of us want is to flee.

What happens next is a Greek tragedy. A clash of Titans played out while the mere mortals are sent scrambling around the ship, searching for away to destroy the hub. It's not the easy thing, but it's the right thing. And for the time being, _Captain_ Janeway's still in charge.

The fact is they still believe in her. I still believe in her. But I can't ignore the truths that our time our here has shown me. Those tell me when Kathryn Janeway - from any timeline - bucks Starfleet regulations, the Temporal Prime Directive, and then out and out _begs_…

The future is fucking nigh.

It's impossible to ignore, and the icy, hardened reception I received a few weeks ago might now be a symptom of a more systemic problem. Destroying the hub will leave us here, in the Delta Quadrant. And the Delta Quadrant will create this…

I don't have the luxury of setting aside my duty as Kathryn's first officer not to mention it, and on the night before we are set to re-enter the nebula, I force myself along the corridor toward her quarters. There's no answer at the chime for a long minute then the doors slides back to reveal her face. Twenty-six years older than I expected to see.

"Admiral?" I make a cursory glance over her shoulder to see the Captain is not inside. "What are you doing here?"

"They are _my_ quarters." There's something sinister yet vestigial in that voice, suggesting familiarity while masking iniquity. Which means she's here for other reasons. "What are _you_ doing here, Chakotay?"

"My job."

I'm subjected to scrutinizing silence as the resentment seats itself directly across the bridge of her nose. She saddles up a step, moving the line of her body against mine. My pulse quickens when her mouth hangs just a breath from my ear, my body trained to her smell. Her razor thin voice laced with a viciousness I've never known in her to date as she bypasses all pleasantries to cut to the heart of the matter.

"Do you _honestly_ believe she'll never wind up in your bed again over the next twenty-six years?"

I withdraw to see her face. "Are you telling me my relationship with Seven isn't going to work?"

"No," she drawls then side-steps me, moving into the corridor. "I didn't say that."

What the hell? Better yet, _who the hell_? And the implication makes me stomach roil with disgust. The man I am could never. The Kathryn I know would never –

Or would she?

The Admiral launches a smile at my hesitation, but all it promises is pain. Before she waltzes away, she laughs – _laughs_ – a self-satisfied chuckle that means she's accomplished everything she'd actually came here to do and nested a kernel of doubt exactly where it needs to be.

I've felt a lot of things for Kathryn, but never hatred. Not until now.

Her eleventh-hour act of contrition is to sacrifice herself to the Borg, but it does nothing to unseat my dismay for the final words she chose to speak to me. Neither does being greeted by a cadre of Starfleet ships, or seeing familiar stars as we edge ever closer to Earth.

Personnel begin to arrive. Consolers, doctors, and engineers who move like tourists rather than officers. Tuvok is whisked off on the _Emmaline_ to meet his family and commence treatment of the disease he's hidden from us all.

Suddenly, there's another Captain – Alexander Re, Kathryn's liaison in the coming weeks. She introduces him as an academy buddy, but he's a facsimile of everything destroying that hub just won her. The living, breathing archetype of what the next few years – or at least the next few hours – will look like for her. Re's face says he knows it, too.

That night, from my quarters I swear I can hear her laughter and the tinkling of glasses, but Seven only tips her head, curious to what I might be perceiving that she is not.

Our last act as a crew is to walk off the ship, but it takes more than an hour to accomplish. The hallway is crowded with shouts as crewman scramble into rank, spun up with the distant sound of applause when the first few begin to step free.

The line dwindles until it's just the senior staff in new dress uniforms, of which B'Elanna has nothing good to say.

"They get tighter and tighter."

The Doctor offers her a warm smile. "I'll remind you that you just had a child, Lieutenant. Give your body time to adjust."

Harry and the Doctor take point, Tom and B'Elanna behind them. Kathryn asked that Seven be allowed to exit with us, not officially as a crew member, but insisting her assistance as instrumental in our return. Tuvok is still absent, and I understand now, it's more about odd numbers.

It leaves the three of us standing, rather awkwardly, inside the hatch.

To her credit and perhaps her naiveté, Seven's hesitation is only at the crowd beyond. She gives Kathryn and me a final nod, but the Captain has other ideas she plans to enforce.

"Commander," she says, holding her hand out, clearly indicating _I_ should be escorting Seven down the gangway.

I hesitate. So does Seven. "Captain, my place is at your side."

Suddenly, the thing I thought had vanished is alive again, held in her eyes just long enough to remind me of what I've lost before she sinks her final blow.

"Not anymore, Chakotay."

And here I had hoped that particular viciousness had died with the Admiral. All at once, it's alive and staring me down, begging me to defy her in these final moments when I know doing anything other than what she asks will not only secure her victory, but also prove that what I could ever feel for Seven is nothing compared to what I already feel for _her_.

Then it's gone. Hidden on the other side of some impenetrable pane of glass than pulls her spine ramrod straight and fills her voice with a much more convincing sweetness. "Go on. I'll be fine on my own."

Though, who she's trying to convince, I'm not sure.

The debriefings are a blur, barely more than a week. Kathryn gets one extra to address the general court marshal that comes when any ship is lost, but she comes through it clean, greeted at Starfleet Headquarters by a mortal crush of reports, shouting questions in her face. She's gets through that cleanly, too.

In the following days, Seven is distant. Her frequent closed-door communications with the Doctor are telling, but I don't have the stamina to address it, nor do I feel any urgency in doing so.

Time levels, after all.

"I have something I need to discuss with you," Seven begins, wiping her mouth and settling the napkin in the center of the plate. "Over the last few weeks I have given a great deal of thought as to your question, about what I intended to do now that we are back in the Alpha quadrant."

Something aches in the back of my throat, my jaw. "You're breaking up with me, aren't you?"

The answer is yes, but she presses on. "On _Voyager_, my choices were … _limited_… but now that we're on Earth…"

Whatever reasoned explanation she gives is half-heard, and ends abruptly with a promise to see me again when Starfleet passes their final ruling. The night is quiet, painfully so without the hum of _Voyager_'s engines. I sit at the table staring at nothing, wondering if one of these godforsaken women – Seven, Kathryn, the Admiral – ever considered their timing.

When the moment comes, Kathryn calls us together, but I can see the sure pride glowing around the edges of her carefully controlled features. On Kathryn, great news only looks like good news when she's playing at what she thinks is _wonderful_ news.

She passes a stack of PADDs around the room, into eager hands. "Full restoration of rank and privileges therein."

B'Elanna and Tom are clutched by Harry, tearful but laughing. Seven and Tuvok study their assignments in tandem, nodding pleasantly over what they find.

"Where will we be assigned? Will they keep us together?"

Kathryn offers Paris a wistful smile. "I suppose that depends on what you want to do, Tom."

"And _Voyager_?" Harry asks.

"Is in for a fourteen month overhaul, at least."

"Some of the crew should remain aboard to oversee the removal of any modified components," Seven says.

Tuvok nods. "Agreed."

Tom scoops B'Elanna against him, kissing her heartily. "There are some great test beds for new ship designs at Utopia Planetia."

"Not to mention warp core design."

Tossing her hands out, Kathryn shoulders shake with laughter. "Wait a minute. Are you all telling me I just spent seven years trying to get you off that damned ship and you want to go _back_?"

A chorus of affirmative and furtive nods passed around the room until finally the Doctor looks at me.

"What about you, Commander?"

I stare at the PADD in my hands. There was time, not too long ago, that I'd hoped for this moment. Hoped and prayed for a way to stay close to her once we returned.

Time levels.

I lay it on the table. "No, thanks."

The outcry is instantaneous, except for from Kathryn who looks like she expected something like this. She licks her lips and ducks her eyes, chin to chest, unwilling to look at me in the moment.

They don't understand. Well, maybe Paris does after a few seconds of scanning the distance between my face and Kathryn's. Yep. In fact, I'm sure he gets it.

"Chakotay, you're not serious." This from B'Elanna. "After everything we've been through."

"You're breaking up the family," the Doctor accuses.

"I left Starfleet once for a good reason. That hasn't changed."

I'm not about to let them make her argument for her, but Kathryn seems content to just stand there. I turn to leave, take two steps toward the door when her voice jerks me back.

"This isn't about Starfleet. It's about _us_!"

It freezes me. Mostly because I didn't think she had the balls to say it, not in present company at least. Seven's the only one I really feel bad for, but only a little. She did just break up with me after all.

I pivot slowly, seething, hands wide and itching for a fight. "You want to do this _now_? _Fine_."

Everything on her face says she's knows it's not the sharpest maneuver she's ever made. There's nothing worse for her than being called to rails in front of her crew, but she did just profess them to be family, if she even knows the definition of the word. Let's see the great soon-to-be Admiral shake her way out of this one.

"What did the she tell you?"

Now they're firmly entrenched and even Tuvok looks curious beyond reproach. It seems predictable that all eyes fall to Seven, who had no idea she was destined to be the wedge to the crack that time had created between us. Even Kathryn studies her face, assessing her knowingness in some uninterruptable way.

"What was so horrible in our futures that she… _you_… gave up everything you stood for to stop it?"

It occurs to me now, after I've said it, no one held her accountable for this. Not Starfleet, not the Board of Review. Tuvok wasn't enough, would never _allow_ himself to be enough, to so drastically alter the timeline. But here we are. She knowingly wiped out twenty-six years of history – our history – and still hasn't had to answer one question:

_Why_?

It snaps her attention back to me, and in the fraction of time it takes for her to mask it, I see the same knowing sadness spill across her features as the night she lay beside me on Lake George. The same anguish that says she has looked into our future, long and hard, knowing all the risks she took to save us were the same ones that would cost her greatest.

"_I can promise you anything_…"

"_The Admiral suggested your feelings for me would cause you pain… in the future_…"

"_Are you telling me my relationship with Seven won't work_?"

"_No, I didn't say that_."

"_Daha me-nay_," I say, my anger bottoms out, replaced by the crushing sensation that I've been wrong about this whole damn thing, and the pieces slide together like some frantic mosaic. "No greater regret… I thought you meant you regretted that night."

"Never," she whispered.

"Maybe we should –" Tom begins, eyes desperately set on the door.

"No," Kathryn says, holding him still with a single sweep of her hand. She paces away from the safety of the group to meet me head on. "She said Seven's death would drive you mad. That neither of us would be the same. And what would follow would be beyond suffering." She licks her lips, steels herself. "I couldn't let that happen, not again. Not to you."

Time levels.

Anger.

Reason.

Sometimes, even love.

When she shows up at my apartment that night and offers me nothing more than her hand, I take it. As symbolic of our past as it once was, the gesture now speaks of a future. As does her breathless laughter when I run my fingers along her skin and pull her mouth to mine.

"I love you," she tells me between gasps. "Do you still love me?"

The question startles me, but I know why she asks it, what about it makes her vulnerable. She has to be certain, then again, so do I. I hold her away by the shoulders, eyes sweeping over the careworn expression she's trying so hard to hide.

It's possible that our paths were laid out long before we walk them, arced across intersecting planes of intersecting universes, tangled together like some Gordian knot waiting for time to cleave them in two. It's possible, but I doubt it.

What I don't doubt is that, in every version of our lives, I have always loved Kathryn Janeway.

* * *

_fini_


End file.
